Five children killed in Gaza Strip battles

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Five children are among the dead as violence intensified between Israelis and Palestinians around the northern Gaza Strip.

Ten Palestinians and three Israelis were killed yesterday as Israeli troops thrust deep into Gaza. The day before a two-year-old boy and a girl, aged four, were killed and at least 13 people injured when a Palestinian rocket struck the Israeli town of Sderot, close to the northern end of the sealed-off Palestinian enclave.

Earlier on Wednesday, three Palestinian schoolboys were shot dead by Israeli soldiers in two separate incidents inside Gaza, and several more were shot and wounded.

The latest upsurge in killing comes as more than 100 Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles mount the third raid in as many months into northern Gaza in an attempt to deter the firing of homemade missiles at Israeli towns and Jewish settlements inside the strip.

Yesterday, Palestinian gunmen killed an Israeli woman jogging along a road connecting the Jewish settlements of Elei Sinai and Dugit, military sources said.

Israel Radio reported a second Israeli was also killed in the attack but provided no additional details. Soldiers who rushed to the scene returned fire and killed at least one gunman, sources said.

It was the second deadly ambush by militants in Gaza yesterday. Earlier, two Hamas gunmen struck an army position near the Jabalya refugee camp, killing a soldier before they were shot dead.

Earlier this week a 24-year-old female American immigrant became the first Gaza settler to be killed by a Palestinian missile since the present intifada began, prompting the latest incursion.

Palestinians say that an armed man was also killed on Wednesday when Israeli soldiers shot dead two boys, aged 17 and 14, as they threw stones at Israeli tanks entering Jabalya.

A boy of 13 was shot dead by Israeli soldiers as he threw stones near the Gaza Jewish settlement of Netzarim.

The Israeli Government has signalled the intensification of its campaign inside the Gaza Strip in response to the latest Israeli casualties. The office of the Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, said that the defence forces "would respond with severity and use all measures to respond and stop the firing of [missiles]".

The Israeli deaths from Palestinian missile fire are an embarrassment for Mr Sharon's Government, coinciding as they do with a series of raids into Gaza designed to deter rocket fire.